Positioning information, such as global positioning information or Global Position System “GPS” type information which is provided by a satellite assembly, is typically received by one or more ground based receivers and/or by a ground based receiver assembly (e.g., surveyed locations), and is then selectively received, disseminated to or transmitted to a wide variety of individuals and business enterprises at the selected times for use within and/or by a wide variety of applications, including control applications within and/or from a satellite operation center. For example and without limitation, such information may be used to control and track the progress, position, and travel path of aircraft and other selectively movable apparatuses or systems and such information may be used to selectively track the progress, position, and travel path of individuals. Such information may also be used by individuals and operators of various apparatuses to determine a present location or position of an animate and/or inanimate object and to provide useful information to selected users various selected times.
While such positioning information is useful and widely used, it is oftentimes undesirably errant and provides inaccurate position information. Such undesired inaccuracies may be caused from a variety of sources, such as and without limitation, the ground based receiver assembly which initially receives the satellite based and/or generated position signal, destructive interference of the signals, and/or faults occurring within the satellites and/or within the processing assemblies which receive the signals from the ground based receiver.
Knowledge of the error occurring in the provided information allows a user and controller to be warned, in a timely manner, of the inaccurate information, effective to prevent the errant information from causing undesired results.
It is therefore desirable to provide a system and a method for determining the amount of error associated with position information and to reliably and readily disseminate the existence of and/or the amount of the determined error to a wide variety of users of the information in an efficient and timely manner. Other useful information can then also be disseminated to selected users at selected times using the same satellite operation center. These and other non-limiting advantages are provided by the present invention.